Bonfires, Baptist Style

By now you all know about the little North Carolina church that plans to have a bonfire next Saturday night. Even though Baptists haven’t been around for more than a couple hundred years, the pastor thinks his word is the be-all and end-all of religion because they don’t have a central authority. Interestingly, Baptists claim to have been around since before Catholics and disclaim the idea that they’re Protestants. Yet, what Bible does this minister prefer?

While I am not a theologian, pre-dating Catholicism while at the same time using a Bible translated between 1604 and 1611, and printed by the King’s printer for the Church of England to use sounds suspiciously like a protestant denomination.

Maybe it’s just me, but if Baptists truly had been around since the time of Christ, don’t you suppose they’d have a version of the Bible all their own? One that they could trace back to…right, to whom would they trace it? They’re not Catholic, so aren’t likely to have actually hung out with the Apostles though I suppose it’s possible that they could’ve paid attention to the Apostles and written down their own versions of the events that are written about in the Gospels.

Since they didn’t and the claim they’ve been around since, my highly unscientific investigation concludes that, absent proof, such as a Baptist Bible that has been with us through the ages, it’s seriously doubtful that they’ve been around for more than the last 400 or so years.